Massachusetts based MatchMine, which raised $10 million a year ago, has shut down operations.
The company created media recommendations that categorizes and analyzes your media likes and dislikes in order to serve you content that is more to your taste.
In a blog post today CEO Michael Troiano talks about the shutdown, and encourages others to hire the team, but he gives few details about the reason for the failure.
He suggests there’s some drama behind the scenes: “I could not have imagined this last Thursday, let alone earlier. It is one thing to be failed, quite another to have been deceived.” My guess (and it’s only a guess) is he’s pointing the finger at his investor, Kraft Group. Either a promised bridge funding fell through, or Kraft pulled what was left of their previous investment out of the company. That’s the only reasonable explanation for how the CEO didn’t know the company was shutting down a day before it happened.
MatchMine joins the DeadPool and have also been added to the Layoff Tracker.
just goes to show you that being Harvard Business School grad isnt all it cuts out to be in the real world.
Classic comment.
(not implying anything about these circumstances, but it’s a good point about degrees in general…especially with tech)
Most unfortunate… Speaking of which, I’m wondering how WeatherBill (a CA-based weather derivatives startup highlighted by T.Crunch some time back) is doing – amidst the turmoil in the banking industry. Can anyone shed some light?
WeatherBill is going strong because companies large and small are more concerned than ever with maintaining their profit expectations. The last thing they need is unexpected weather depleting what profits they have or increasing costs. Announcing to a board of directors that you’re company failed to meet profit expectations because of bad weather is no longer an option.
BTW, the Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA) announced this year that the value of coverage in the weather risk management industry rose 76 percent to $32-billion in 2007-2008, up from $19-billion in 2006-2007.
i’m sure he kept a nice cut of the initial funding. hooray for VC..it’s like hitting the lotto
It was great working at matchmine, and I am sad to see it come to an end. We had a great group of people working on the product, and I’m sorry to see that it’s over.
As an 18-year-old intern who was subsequently hired, I can say working at Matchmine was a great experience. It was a great company.
On another note, it’s really depressing to see your own company in the Deadpool…
If there’s a Will, there’s a way. (No pun intended)
Why did it fail? From the eyes of an innocent? What would you have done differently?
It was a large company, which certainly made for a high burn rate, but also gave it the ability to do things competitors couldn’t. So, really, it was just a victim of an investor tightening the purse strings in a rough economy, at least as far as I’m aware.
how do you piss away 10 mil in a year?
They don’t usually provide all the $ at once. It comes in tranches.
Another sad news.
Wondering if you can put a new spin on your Layoff Pool, Michael. How about letting recently terminated people post their resume on your site (with a link from their company’s Layoff Pool listing).
Fucked Company was one thing –– different time/place/vibe. But these days, there’s a real ‘meat hook’ reality to these terminations. Why not do something to help those folks get ‘unfucked?’ Just a thought…
Scary. I interviewed there in August. Dodged a bullet there!
I thought for sure this was going to be a story about the first dating site to ever go out of business.
This guy is supposed to talk at the MIT enterprise forum tomorrow (”Innovation Series – The Rise of Advertising Networks”):
http://www.mitf...ge.org/oct.html
Wonder what he’ll talk about?
My guess is that he’ll talk about the rise of advertising networks.
Sad to hear this news, funding down the drain.
This is a sad news. In person, I have some connection with the founder. Hence it is even a shock for me to hear the news.
Wish the team be lucky at this tough time.
Yihong
Best of luck to the team, I’ve been working with them for a couple months. A great group of guys.
This announcement comes completely out of the blue, and they were doing business as usual as far as I know up until this post..
The Krafts took a big hit over the last month. Lots of angels and LPs are in the same boat. They want and need their money back. SImple as that. And the lack of an obvious business model. And overcrowding in the music rec. space. And bad karma.
I feel that there was a very strong business model in highly targeted advertising served off the same technology used to make recommendations. The problem was, the money hadn’t started coming in yet, so the Krafts’ must have just looked at the bottom line and decided not to go forward.
MatchMine was hiring heavily last summer and they had some very weird product visions…not easily understood IMHO. I’m sure the Kraft Group got cold feet very quickly when they see stock market dropping, Sequoia’s warning bells and dropping advertising rates.
Thought this was a dating service no wonder it went out of business when i found it wasn’t maybe thats where what they should do with all there traffic………at least they will make money
For the record…I’ve already published a comment in the matchmine blog to clarify that that sentence (“It’s one thing to be failed, quite another to have been deceived”) was NOT a reference to our investors at all.
I was concerned that the partners we were engaged with – and the prospective partners we were still pitching as late as Thursday – might feel deceived by us. We may have failed them, in good faith, but that’s different than lying through our teeth knowing we were going to shut the company down on Monday. Hence the failure vs. deception distinction.
They must not have fell far short of their milestones? Curious, any revenues?
I met Mike at web2.0expo in NYC and he came across as a genuinely great guy, so I’m really sorry for him in first instance.
Furthermore, I think that Matchmine’s business is good and it basically found its roots where the Internet is heading / will be heading – higher personalization and significant value added for users. So, it’s a loss for everybody.
Keep up with the good work you guys have done.
Great concept. Three years early. This is something that needed a really long ramp.
Mike and his team are amongst the best people I have had the pleasure of working with. We’re one of their partners and got a call from one of their team members right away to help with the transition. I hope Mike and his team get through these difficult times.
Mike was kind enough to open up his office to me for well over an hour last year to pitch a business I was attempting and never once did he look at his watch to get me out. Stand up guy and I wish him luck in his future endeavors. – Brian
Well, Mike screwed the pooch again. A lot of brains very little practical biz savy.
Always very sad to see people put out of their jobs. I am sure there were many great, talented people at matchmine, and I wish them all the best. Have to say the guy I interviewed with, Todd, was an arrogant douchebag, no other way to put it. He was making and receiving phone calls throughout the interview. I had a bad feeling even though he assured me that everything was as secure as could be with Kraft backing. And then the other shoe fell.